Where The Mutants Come From
Sep. 14th, 2021 12:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sphagnumIn principle, and arguing as is usually done, from the point of view biology, the mutants arise because of evolution and errors in copying the mRNA.
Fine. There are enough smart people thinking and writing about that, so I'm going to remark that there is a different process which gives us the Mu, Delta, etc. variants. And that that process is entirely human.
There are a few components in this process, and the first one is the current state of science as an institution. Science as an institution lives through universities, research centers, etc. which are filled with very motivated and competitive people who can't do anything else, and, incidentally, have a mortgage to pay. Competition is very intense, and if you are a virologist then, let's face it, finding a new scary mutant will be quite an asset in your CV. If you can publish the finding in a prestigious journal called Nature, even some form of tenure might be possible. I hope you understand that in a situation like this articles about scary mutants will be a regular feature in Nature, simply because the motivation structure is so damn strong.
In my experience this is not simply corruption or baldfaced fraud, but instead comes from a culture in which cavalier attitudes towards data integrity meet an eagerness to jump to conclusions, all in an environment where everybody does the same so nobody can see a problem with it. Add to this a bit of wishful thinking and there you go, no fraud committed! You see, the careful thinkers all end up publishing too little and leaving academia early.
Once a new scary mutant has been found, the next step in the mutant's journey is the press release. Universities and research institutes need publicity, so the scary mutant now lands on the desks of the PR department, in front of the people who like to work on the message. So, for example, things like disclaimers on page 18 of the supplementary material of the original article do not make it to the press release. It would just distract from the message which, hilariously, is not that the mutant is scary, no, but that the great scientists of this great institution contributed to the well-being of the planet. Now that we know that this mutant is here we can be super careful and not leave the basement for a few months just in case.
The next step of the journey is through mass media. These companies live from people looking at ads, and you get them to look at ads by scaring and worrying them, so at this point scary mutant mutates into doomsday mutant. If things go well then the link gets shared widely and a very large number of people looks at the ads.
The public that consumes this material can be roughly divided along whether they believe #Science (which is not the same thing as plain old science) or think that this is Klaus' and Billy's shenanigans. This type of content is hugely successful because both the skeptics and the believers share this like crazy for totally different reasons, but it doesn't matter at all because the clicks keep coming. Especially once the tribes of twitter and facebook use the content to attack and smear each other. Lots and lots of clicks are generated by this huge saloon brawl of people very worried about this side or that side of the issue, sharing this stuff with abandon and calling each other names, all to feel themselves online bastions of reason and virtue.
I could go on with politics but I think at this point you get the idea. The mutants will keep coming because, well, how could they not?
How can you stop something like this? I believe that the smart folks at the WHO have come up with a very sneaky and smart idea which will stop this in its tracks some day: they decided to name the variants after constellations. I'm absolutely convinced that their cunning plan is that, at some point, some scientist will find a new scary mutant and call it the Andromeda strain. And then hopefully everybody at once realizes how painfully ridiculous all of this is and the madness finally stops.
Fine. There are enough smart people thinking and writing about that, so I'm going to remark that there is a different process which gives us the Mu, Delta, etc. variants. And that that process is entirely human.
There are a few components in this process, and the first one is the current state of science as an institution. Science as an institution lives through universities, research centers, etc. which are filled with very motivated and competitive people who can't do anything else, and, incidentally, have a mortgage to pay. Competition is very intense, and if you are a virologist then, let's face it, finding a new scary mutant will be quite an asset in your CV. If you can publish the finding in a prestigious journal called Nature, even some form of tenure might be possible. I hope you understand that in a situation like this articles about scary mutants will be a regular feature in Nature, simply because the motivation structure is so damn strong.
In my experience this is not simply corruption or baldfaced fraud, but instead comes from a culture in which cavalier attitudes towards data integrity meet an eagerness to jump to conclusions, all in an environment where everybody does the same so nobody can see a problem with it. Add to this a bit of wishful thinking and there you go, no fraud committed! You see, the careful thinkers all end up publishing too little and leaving academia early.
Once a new scary mutant has been found, the next step in the mutant's journey is the press release. Universities and research institutes need publicity, so the scary mutant now lands on the desks of the PR department, in front of the people who like to work on the message. So, for example, things like disclaimers on page 18 of the supplementary material of the original article do not make it to the press release. It would just distract from the message which, hilariously, is not that the mutant is scary, no, but that the great scientists of this great institution contributed to the well-being of the planet. Now that we know that this mutant is here we can be super careful and not leave the basement for a few months just in case.
The next step of the journey is through mass media. These companies live from people looking at ads, and you get them to look at ads by scaring and worrying them, so at this point scary mutant mutates into doomsday mutant. If things go well then the link gets shared widely and a very large number of people looks at the ads.
The public that consumes this material can be roughly divided along whether they believe #Science (which is not the same thing as plain old science) or think that this is Klaus' and Billy's shenanigans. This type of content is hugely successful because both the skeptics and the believers share this like crazy for totally different reasons, but it doesn't matter at all because the clicks keep coming. Especially once the tribes of twitter and facebook use the content to attack and smear each other. Lots and lots of clicks are generated by this huge saloon brawl of people very worried about this side or that side of the issue, sharing this stuff with abandon and calling each other names, all to feel themselves online bastions of reason and virtue.
I could go on with politics but I think at this point you get the idea. The mutants will keep coming because, well, how could they not?
How can you stop something like this? I believe that the smart folks at the WHO have come up with a very sneaky and smart idea which will stop this in its tracks some day: they decided to name the variants after constellations. I'm absolutely convinced that their cunning plan is that, at some point, some scientist will find a new scary mutant and call it the Andromeda strain. And then hopefully everybody at once realizes how painfully ridiculous all of this is and the madness finally stops.